Russia warns against isolating Iran over nuclear issue

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has severely warned against the ramifications of West’s scenario to isolate Iran over the country’s nuclear energy program.
“If people believe that the more you provoke Iran, the sooner Iran will make its decision, then I think this is a very dangerous path,” Lavrov said in a Wednesday TV interview with Bloomberg.
“If isolation is the slogan of the day -- more and more sanctions and threats to bomb Iran -- and, God forbid, if this happens, what we’ll suffer immediately is [the future of] cooperation between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” he added.
“By threatening and sanctioning again and again, we are not making Iran more cooperative,” the Russian foreign minister pointed out.
He defended Iran’s program to achieve full nuclear fuel cycle as “absolutely in line with the [nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)” stressing that, “There is no indication that Iran has taken a political decision to go military in its nuclear program.”
Lavrov went on to say that even the information that Pentagon makes public from time to time corroborates the same contention.
The West’s sanctions are meant to pressure the Islamic Republic over its nuclear energy program, which Washington, Israel and some of their allies claim includes a military aspect.
The United States, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Iran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear energy program, but Iran rejects the allegations, arguing that as a committed signatory to the NPT and a member of the IAEA, it is entitled to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence showing that Iran's nuclear program has been diverted toward military objectives.
ASH/SS